The Cincinnati Enquirer, the paper that originally reported on the still-unresolved case of Warren County, Ohio's tabulation room lockdown on Election Night in 2004, has taken note of the comments made by OH Sec. of State, Jennifer Brunner in The BRAD BLOG's exclusive interview with her last week.

They highlight our exchange with the Secretary, concerning the lack of investigation, by her office, or any other, into the specious "Homeland Security warning" that county officials claimed had forced them to impose an unprecedented lock out, of both the media and public, denying them the ability to observe the tabulation in the counting room on Election Night. Warren County was one of the last counties in the Buckeye State to report their results in 2004 and went overwhelmingly for George W. Bush.

Brunner told us during our interview last week that she found the issue "troubling," and said that she still "can't find any justification for it."

"We'll look again at that situation and see what the best course of action is to prevent it from happening in the future," she promised us.

We argued that the best course of action is to bring accountability in order to send the message that such behavior will not be tolerated again.

At this time, the issue remains uninvestigated, the FBI and Dept. of Homeland Security deny issuing any such warnings to Warren or any other county in Ohio, and many of the county officials responsible for the unprecedented lockdown in 2004, in violation of state law, as well as the same county prosecutor, all remain in charge as another Presidential Election is set to begin in 2008.

Two of the Enquirer's original reports on the disturbing matter are posted here and here.

A very quick review of the reportage at the time, naming the names of those who were complicit, and the federal agencies that denied any such threat, follows...

As the Enquirer reporter, Erica Solvig, initially reported at the time:

Warren County Emergency Services Director Frank Young said he had recommended increased security based on information received from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in recent weeks.

[County] Commissioners made the security decisions in a closed-door meeting last week, but didn't publicize the restrictions that were made until after polls closed.
...
Typically, the Warren County commissioners' room is set up as a gathering place for people to watch the votes come in. But that wasn't done this year.

And despite being told that there would be an area with telephones set up for the media, those who tried to get into the [County Administration] building on Justice Drive were stopped by a county employee who stood guard outside.

County Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel, who remains in the same position today, told the paper at the time that the Election Commissioners "were within their rights" to restrict building access, though she did not elaborate on those "rights".

Now, [county Commissioners] say an FBI agent told them that Warren County ranked a "10" [out of 10] on a terrorism scale. However, state and federal homeland security officials said Tuesday they were unaware of any specific threat against the county.
...
Frank Young, the county's emergency services director...said he recommended the security precautions after getting information from an FBI agent during a conversation about general Election Day threats. Young refused to identify the agent Tuesday.
...
Officials at the FBI, which oversees anti-terrorism activities in southern Ohio, said they received no information about a terror threat in Warren County.

"The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day," FBI spokesman Michael Brooks said.

A spokeswoman for Ohio's top homeland security official, Public Safety Director Ken Morckel, knew of no heightened terror warning for either Warren County or any other Greater Cincinnati community on election night.

Two weeks later, after receiving documents from county officials via a public records requests, Solvig reported that the lockdown had been secretly planned well in advance of Election Night, but not announced until after the close of polls.

To our knowledge, the matter has never been seriously investigated by any state or federal officials since it was first reported back in 2004.

Our own coverage of the matter was originally posted here on November 8, 2004, and updated several times thereafter with additional developments.

"The authors assert, and back it up with daring reporting, that your vote and mine may now be a meaningless bit of energy directed by preprogrammed computers — which can be fixed to select certain pre-ordained candidates and leave no footprints or paper trail.

In short, computers are covertly stealing your vote.

• For almost three decades the American vote has been subject to government-sponsored electronic theft.

• The vote has been stolen from you by a cartel of federal 'national security' bureaucrats, who include higher-ups in the Central Intelligence Agency, political party leaders, Congressmen, co-opted journalists — and the owners and managers of the major Establishment news media, who have decided in concert that how America's votes are counted, by whom they are counted and how the results are verified and delivered to the public is, as one of them put it, 'Not a proper area of inquiry.'

• By means of an unofficial private corporation named News Election Service (NES), the Establishment press has actual physical control of the counting and dissemination of the vote, and it refuses to let the public know how it is done.

This book also contends that the theft of your vote or Votescam, is part of a supposedly patriotic 'collaboration' between federal officials and the news media that began shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, when the 'responsible" American press was persuaded by American intelligence services to hide from the American people the actual implications of the Kennedy murder.'"

A wikipedia entry about this book says the following:

"Votescam: The Stealing of America" - a 1992 Book by Kenneth and James Collier.

"A book which was immediately banned by the major book chains, who listed the book as ‘out of print’ and actively worked to prevent it's sale. The veil of secrecy prevailed. The co-authors of this book were (they died in the nineties), James and Kenneth Collier, two entrepreneurial brothers who, from 1970 onwards carried out a comprehensive examination of the American voting system, resulting in their book, which exposed, in detail, corporate America’s manipulation of the voting system over a number of decades. Kenneth Collier stood against Claude Pepper in the Florida primary elections of 1970 and took steps that led to the assistant attorney general Henry E. Petersen initiating federal investigation at the time."

Anyone at BradBlog familiar with this book? Any reaction whether the work is valid or corroborated by other research? I have not had a chance to read but the first part of this but it seems to reiterate a contention that a journalist colleague of my sister's has asserted, too.

When Bradblog is coming up, it has one statement on its banner "Give them enough rope", but sadly, the rope we are giving them is the rope they are hanging US with.

We must get to the place where our government is always of the people so we don't have to take it back. These daze government by the people does not exist, for we are ruled by an elite military industrial complex and its blind ideology.

Also, remember the Schmidt/Hackett election? Where the machines went down in the bottom of the 9th due to "moisture" and Schmidt came in with a flurry of votes after that? You remember, that moisture cloud that was IN THE VOTING ROOM!!!

DURING the past quarter of a century, with hardly anyone noticing, the inner workings of democracy have been computerized. All our elections, from mayor to President, are counted locally, in about ten thousand five hundred political jurisdictions, and gradually, since 1964, different kinds of computer-based voting systems have been installed in town after town, city after city, county after county.

I think it was only inevitable that computers would become used to tabulate our election vote totals, but the important issue is how transparent is the process and subject to verification right back to the original paper ballot stage of the election, if necessary, and through a regular sample test process, to assure accurate counts. From what I have read, the GEMS system does not seem to meet that standard.

Can anyone with more detailed technical knowledge of this speak to these concerns? If so, please provide us readers your credentials at the same time. (OMS Media, you are automatically disqualified.)

If the polar bears hear that the EI movement is coming to save them, they will probably all just commit suicide and get it overwith without having to read 4 billion useless posts on countless useless movement blogs. Ditto for the climate change movement.

I mean patting ourselves on the back in the face of the catastrophic failure of the movement to stop the election fiascos is ultimate self deception.

There's right, and there's wrong. Tabulating votes electronically is unconstitutional. The people just aren't aware of it yet. We have no self deception about that fact. What we actually have is a situation where (media, and government) who can change it are practicing "perceived diligence" a term *I have coined* that means, to talk and behave like you care when in the spotlight, but really don't care in your heart, and in fact work to do the opposite. Thereby giving the impression that something good is being executed when in reality nothing could be further from the truth. Another way of looking at this is by the definition of the individual words, take perceived to mean "perception, or the public's perception", and diligence, meaning "constant and earnest effort to accomplish" It's all acting, it's corruption, it's on par with the old saying by social engineering fraudsters who are ripping people off, "Tell them whatever they want to hear to make them go away. "

The only self deception here, is if the people that have screwed up our elections think we are going away. Those who have sworn an oath, CAN'T GO AWAY.

The problem with the EI movement (I don't really like that term) is inconsistency in applying constitutional law, the lightness of sentences, complete lack of accountability, the completely broken feedback loop between government and the people, slowness to act, confusion, and obfuscation of acronyms, terms, bill numbers, drafts, and physics itself. The complexity of electronics and it's formulas and laws vs. explaining to non-technical people. The cost to get information that should be available, the cost to get lawsuits filed, the cost in time wasted out of peoples lives, and the ultimate cost in death and destruction because the machines led to elections that led to courts that led to the wrong candidates being sworn in which led to the giant tree roots of a diseased flowering mulberry infiltrating every other government office, appointment, judge or oversight commission. The trunk has become hundreds of feet wide, but it still can be removed if everyone was aware it's unconstitutional.

The only self deception here, is if the people that have screwed up our elections think we are going away.

Yep, if they brag openly about vote crimes, it is hardly likely that they take us seriously:

Kris Kobach, a former counsel to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft who is currently the chairman of the Kansas GOP, sent out an email on Thur entitled “Kansas Republican Party Year in Review” in which he brags of voter caging.

(Crooks and Liars). And they are likely to take us less and less seriously as they take over the "free press" in Amurka:

Longtime associates of President George W. Bush are consolidating their hold on American media with a string of recent purchases, RAW STORY can report.